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Facebook is pushing back against a report in Monday's Wall Street Journal that the company is asking major banks to provide private financial data.

The social media giant has reportedly had talks with JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, and US Bancorp to discuss proposed features including fraud alerts and checking account balances via Messenger.

Elisabeth Diana, a Facebook spokeswoman, told Ars that while the WSJ reported that Facebook has "asked" banks "to share detailed financial information about their customers, including card transactions and checking-account balances," this isn't quite right.

"Like many online companies with commerce businesses, we partner with banks and credit card companies to offer services like customer chat or account management," she said in a statement on behalf of the social media giant. "Account linking enables people to receive real-time updates in Facebook Messenger where people can keep track of their transaction data like account balances, receipts, and shipping updates. The idea is that messaging with a bank can be better than waiting on hold over the phone—and it's completely opt-in. We're not using this information beyond enabling these types of experiences—not for advertising or anything else."

Diana further explained that account linking is already live with PayPal, Citi in Singapore, and American Express in the United States.

"We're not shoring up financial data," she added.

In recent months, Facebook has been scrutinized for its approach to user privacy.

Late last month, Facebook CFO David Wehner said, "We are also giving people who use our services more choices around data privacy, which may have an impact on our revenue growth."

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Cyrus Farivar
Cyrus is a Senior Tech Policy Reporter at Ars Technica, and is also a radio producer and author. His latest book, Habeas Data, about the legal cases over the last 50 years that have had an outsized impact on surveillance and privacy law in America, is out now from Melville House. He is based in Oakland, California. Emailcyrus.farivar@arstechnica.com//Twitter@cfarivar

Anything to get people to use Messenger more. They're desperate to shove that thing down everyone's throat.

This is exceedingly evident as they don't allow you to do anything without it on Android. Want to use the .com and check your messages? Nope, it kicks you to the Play store. You have to set your browser to Desktop, or use the extremely streamline and functional Friendly app.

But this is just Facebook yet again trying to create and solve a problem no one needs any help with. Email takes care of everything they mentioned, or banks' own apps. And if I had a real problem with my bank I would rather talk to someone at the gas station about it than use FB's chat to go over it.

Facebook's fundamental problem compared to even someone like Google is they keep doing things to make your life and your experience worse, all for their own benefit, and you get almost nothing in return. Think of location services. For google, turning on location means I get to use Google Maps, have access to things in the area, knowing traffic patterns and busy store hours. For Facebook, if you leave location on they get to sell ads aimed at you. That's it.

You would think GDPR would have been a wake up call for Silicon Valley with how completely out of touch they are with society. We need a grassroots privacy effort of our own in the US to maybe drive home the message.

Amazon, Google, and Facebook are completely tone deaf and out of control. Their ideas are starting to sound like madman ramblings from death row.

Even though I knew I was the product, I didn't see much harm in just letting the account fester. I guess Facebook could figure out which of my friends I cared about more, but that's the only information I was adding to the system (and it's not like I trust them to delete anything).

But yeah, no. Not worth it to see baby pictures from folks I haven't seen in five years.

...We're not using this information beyond enabling these types of experiences—not for advertising or anything else."

Calm down people, nothing to see here. FB is just trying to help you with your life more, why won't you let them? It's not like they have a history of using personal information for profit or something? I totally believe that above quote. /s

That's good, all your typical fraudster needs to do is take over the Facebook account now to accept their unauthorized IBT. Saves them, and the victim, the difficulty and headache associated with porting out the cell phone number to another carrier.

Facebook™: Streamlining fraud and dissemination of child porn since 2004®

["]The idea is that messaging with a bank can be better than waiting on hold over the phone—and it's completely opt-in. We're not using this information beyond enabling these types of experiences—not for advertising or anything else."

Even if they weren’t planning on data mining this, the utter tone-deafness of starting this initiative now is just astonishing. You can’t spend a fucking year being on your best behavior and rebuilding your brand before doing something else that makes the hairs on the back of our necks all stand up? Are you kidding?

This is one of the reasons I just don’t trust Facebook. Even if it’s not nefarious, the tone-deafness indicates that the C-suite at a real fundamental level doesn’t grok why people are upset.

Elisabeth Diana, a Facebook spokeswoman, told Ars that while the WSJ reported that Facebook has "asked" banks "to share detailed financial information about their customers, including card transactions and checking-account balances," this isn't quite right.

and later from FB's Elisabeth Diana:

Quote:

people can keep track of their transaction data like account balances, receipts, and shipping updates

I wish this article made more of an attempt to square these two statements. Because "transaction data like account balances, receipts, and shipping updates" is exactly the sort of detailed financial information described in the WSJ article.

I get the sense that Elisabeth Diana doesn't even understand why this is an issue for people. It's not about how FB might use it - it's that FB has the data at all.

I'm so glad displaying my account balances is opt-in. I was afraid it might be an opt-in for banks submitting the customer data to Facebook. That might cut into your profits, and we need Facebook to be profitable so we can see baby pictures!

Hey Facebook, here is another idea. How about you give customers little cameras to point at their wallets so we can share all our cash transactions with our friends, too? You wouldn't want to be outdone by Venmo, do you?

This is one of the reasons I just don’t trust Facebook. Even if it’s not nefarious, the tone-deafness indicates that the C-suite at a real fundamental level doesn’t grok why people are upset.

This is precisely it. Whether it's through incompetence or nefariousness, it doesn't matter. Facebook is intrinsically a bad actor. They can't be anything else.

Agreed, and I think I'm going to add my voice to Sarty's comment above, and say this is what prompted me to kill my FB account entirely. I had already cut off my posting and exposure, and heavily curated my privacy settings where possible, but I cannot trust Facebook in any way shape or form. Their activities since the massive Cambridge Analytica scandals are proof positive that Facebook CANNOT be trusted with my data. They WILL abuse it.

Because it doesn't matter that we have canceled our accounts. FB is going to solicit our account data. And BofA will roll over and wimper while it gives up the keys to the kingdom. And it's not just BofA. EVERY bank will show their belly. God I F'n hate FB and the Zuck needs to just convert his matter to energy at the earliest opportunity.

It wouldn't be surprising if one of FaceBook's patterns of behavior was repeated:

Reports of FB doing XFB responds, no we don't do X (the word "partners" is part of their response)Time passes FB shifts default user settingsNew reports of FB doing XFB apologizes, "we never intended to do X"

The Facebook model is to do something and then ask for forgiveness only if caught (and there is outrage). Facebook probably isn't mad because they were caught, just that they didn't get a chance to put it all in place prior to being caught.

If there was anywhere else that I could easily move to (Google Plus failed, Twitter is the septic tank of the internet, and instagram is just Facebook with a different name) I would already be gone. I think for the majority of users, that would be the case.